Poetry

Return to the Beginning

The scrambled eggs, already fried and fragrant
on a plate, slip back into their shells;
each smooth white egg sails toward its vagrant
mother chicken, roosts in a fertile cell.

The melody beats back to eighth notes
which settle, dark spots on the snowy staff
of bass and treble clefs, then briefly float
through Bach’s wine-stained shirt into his laugh.

The house remembers when it was imagined.
The nails and bolts that hold the walls in place
fly back to hardware bins. The rafters, stunned,
revert to drawings and desire. So, geese,
who honked across this troubled sky last fall,
welcome back! This chance to undo it all.